


Ghost Trick: Phantom Inspector

by c-airen (C3P0h)



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: AU, Gen, cabanela dies that night instead of sissel, shit happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-03-30 12:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3936592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C3P0h/pseuds/c-airen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cabanela wakes up one fateful night and sees his own dead body laying in the junkyard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 7:02 PM

  
     Cabanela felt light. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, there was nothing holding him down. There was no sense of duty or responsibility weighing on his back, no bitter regrets or memories to ground him, not even a thin layer of fabric draping over his shoulders.  
  
     He didn’t like this feeling.  
  
     Muffled voices began trickling into his consciousness, and he struggled to make out the words. They were just jumbled sounds to him, but he was certain he knew the language. Then, clear as a summer’s day, he heard, “And that obnoxious coat.” Cabanela jolted awake to give his usual response (“It’s a metaphoooooooore, baby!”) when the sight that greeted him froze him in his tracks.  
  
     It was himself. Or rather, it was his body. His lanky limbs were in a tangle on the ground, and his expression was lax. His eyes were open, glassy and unfocused as they stared off into the night. But most alarming of all was the jagged hole torn in his black shirt, right over his heart. Inky darkness seeped out from the hole, staining his shirt and pooling on the ground beneath him. His white coat, once a source of great pride and meaning for him, was ruined, covered in blood, a vibrant red against the dirt staining whatever was left. There’d be no getting that out, he knew.  
  
     Cabanela supposed all this meant he was dead. Oh well.  
  
     Those same voices pulled Cabanela's attention away from his lifeless body, and he turned (how could he turn when he was dead?) to see a peculiar duo. Two men were standing together, talking. The first one was a sight all on his own: he wore a fedora low over his face and a rather sharp suit, if Cabanela did say so himself. He carried a golden shotgun against his shoulder, but it was his skin, blue as the sky, that made him a sight to see.   
       
     It was the other man, though, that gave Cabanela pause. His hair, lemon yellow, pointed upwards to make a cone at the top of his head (the inspector made a mental note to ask him what it meant later on, because such an outlandish style couldn’t simply be for the sake of fashion) and he wore sunglasses even though the sky was already dark. He was a tall man wearing a red suit over a black shirt, with a long white tie. He carried himself casually as he spoke with the other man, his weight over one foot and a hand on his hip. Something nudged at the back of Cabanela’s brain as he looked at the stranger, but he couldn’t figure out why. That is, until he heard a name leave the man’s lips.  
  
     “ _Lynne_.”  
  
     Memories came shooting back into his mind, like a bullet from a gun. Tonight was the scheduled night of Jowd’s execution. The Manipulator was responsible for landing his friend in prison. Alma was dead. Lynne didn’t trust him. Pigeon Man was working with him to uncover the mysteries of the meteorite and the Manipulator. And the man in the red suit should’ve been long dead.  
  
     And just like that, all the weight Cabanela had been missing slammed into his back. He had his memories. He had purpose. Dying didn’t erase the fact that Jowd was about to face execution, and Cabanela’d be damned before he let his friend into the afterlife without getting to see his daughter grow up. The inspector looked back at the man he’d as good as killed all those years ago. The bitterness of his own failures seeped into him, but Cabanela shoved it aside. The man – Yomiel – should’ve died ten years ago, but clearly that wasn’t the case. The inspector had seen the corpse. He’d spent nights drinking with Jowd, lamenting their failures. The man before him was an impossibility, and Cabanela only knew of one other like him: the Manipulator.   
  
     Cabanela rearranged the facts in his head to accommodate this new information. Yomiel was likely the Manipulator. Had Yomiel killed him? He couldn’t remember, but it was probable. Gods knew he had a motive. He also had a motive for framing Jowd with the murder of his own wife. At this thought, rage bubbled up inside of Cabanela, smothering his guilt. As red began to bleed into the inspector’s vision, he struggled to push it aside. He had work to do.  
  
     “C’mon,” Yomiel said, cutting off the inspector’s thoughts, “all that’s left is the brat. After we kill her, you’ll get your money, since you didn’t do shit with _this_ job.” The blue man grumbled something about not getting the chance, but Cabanela was no longer listening.  _Lynne_. They were going to murder his baby! Cabanela’s only thought was that he had to _do_  something, but how? He was dead. It wasn’t like he could just jump back into his corpse and start dancing around again. Yomiel and the blue man were walking towards him. Cabanela floundered for something to do as they approached, but his body was lifeless and he had no way of moving.   
  
     “Outta my way,” Yomiel muttered when he looked down at the corpse. Swinging back a leg, he gave a forceful kick, and Cabanela fell with his body down to the first level of the junkyard.   
  
_So much for doing something_.   
  
     He heard the sounds of footsteps as the two men sauntered down the metal stairs. Wondering why they’d bother walking to the bottom level when the exit to the junkyard was upstairs, Cabanela started when he heard the pay phone blare. Yomiel snatched the receiver up, leaning against the phone box with one hand stuffed in his pocket.  
  
     “Things didn’t go as planned,” he said after a pause. “The inspector showed up. ’S dead now… Jeego was useless… It doesn’t change anything.” Impatience leaked into Yomiel’s voice as he spoke to whomever was on the other side of the phone. Cabanela could hear snippets of a garbled voice through the static, but was unable to actually understand anything that the person was saying. “Yeah we’re gonna take care of it now… Her apartment… Ok.” Yomiel hung up the phone and looked back at the blue man – Jeego, Yomiel had said. He made a jerking motion with his head, gesturing to the stairs and said, “Alright, let’s go.” With that, the two climbed the steps again. Cabanela listened to the metal door to the junkyard rattle open and then slam close as the two men left to go murder Lynne.  
  
     He growled in anger. They wouldn't touch her! As if in response to his growing frustration, the sky opened up and rain began to fall. Desperate and angry, he floundered for something to do, some way to move, when suddenly he _slipped_. The world was completely white around him, and the inspector looked around in confusion. He was still in the old junkyard, but it was as if everything was made of snow – an old armchair, a desk lamp, even his soiled coat, were all bleached white. The only dots of color came in the form of little blue-white spheres, giving off a warm glow. The balls seemed to be nestled within objects, but the inspector couldn’t quite work out what they were. Looking up to further inspect the world, he saw that the drops of rain that had been falling were now all frozen in the air, as if time had stopped. Cabanela raised a hand to touch a drop when he stopped. He could move again. He turned his hand over in front of his face. It was the same rich brown color it’d been in life, except it was completely transparent. Was this… his spirit?  
  
     Cabanela looked down to see his corpse, white like the rest of the world, still crumpled on the ground. From his ghostly chest, he saw an odd blue glow. It flickered and danced in nonexistent wind, like a flame. He lifted a transparent hand to the glow on his chest, but it felt no different from the rest of his body. That is to say, it felt like nothing at all. Wondering how he’d ended up in this weird ghost world, he lifted a leg to take a tentative step. Or rather, he tried to. His feet were firmly planted to the ground under his corpse. He tried again, but to no avail. He couldn’t move.   
  
     His feet were stuck, but he had no trouble lifting a lanky arm and reaching out to the closest sphere, lying within a discarded traffic cone. He was intangible as a ghost (if his feet disappearing into his body were any indication) but his fingers curled around the white-blue ball as though they were solid. Cabanela gave an experimental squeeze. Yup, it was totally solid – for him, at least. These spheres definitely didn’t exist in the realm of the living. Wanting to inspect it more, he tried to pull back his arm to bring the sphere closer to his face. It didn’t budge. Cabanela cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. Well, this was interesting. He gave another, firmer tug, but still nothing. Squaring his shoulders, he lowered his chin to glare at the sphere in concentration and yanked back as hard as he could.   
  
     The world shifted around him. One moment he was standing over his dead body, and the next it was as if he had taken the place of the sphere. Looking down, he saw his torso disappear into the traffic cone. The blue flame was still flickering in his chest, but now it was as if his soul was in the place of the odd sphere.  
  
      _Fascinaaaaaaating._  
  
     Cabanela tried to lift his leg, but it seemed that his feet were just as useless here as they’d been in his corpse. He looked about, and reached for the next closest sphere, which he found resting in a street sign. Reaching for it, he grabbed on and pulled again. And again he moved, snapping into place over the glowing ball. It wasn’t much, but at least he knew how to get around now. He repeated the process a few more times, darting from object to object, just to be sure he got the hang of this spirit-hopping thing.  
  
     “Looks liiiiiiiiiiiike we’re back in business,” he said with a grin. Now he just had to figure out how to actually _do_ things. Plus he still didn’t know what this odd white Ghost World was. Looking back at the frozen rain drops, still suspended mid-air, Cabanela wondered how he could get the world all colorful again. The last time it’d just sort of happened. He’d been trying to regain his mobility, and with his usual methods unavailable, an alternative had just been… there.  Maybe if he just concentrated it would happen again?  
  
     Cabanela didn’t know how long it took him to figure out how to flip between the Ghost World and the world of the living. It was like discovering how to use a new limb, learning to flex muscles he didn’t even know he had. Once he finally managed it though, he switched back and forth, watching the world around him flash from white to dark, like a strobe light. He lamented death if only because it meant he could no longer use his MP3 player. No matter, Cabanela’d never let a lack of music keep him from dancing.  
  
     But of course, he had a job to do – people to save. This wasn’t the time to be lolling around, dead. With this thought, Cabanela flipped back into the white Ghost World (he’d discovered he could only hop between objects on this side) and started planning. Protecting Lynne was the immediate priority. Jowd’s execution was scheduled for 11:00 PM that night. Cabanela had no sense of time as he couldn’t remember much of the evening leading up to his death, but something told him he still had time. Lynne didn’t have any time at all though, going from Yomiel’s conversation. And there was Jowd’s baby girl to worry about, who was living with Lynne since, well… her parents couldn’t take care of her.  
  
     Cabanela had to figure out how to get to Lynne’s apartment before them. While he’d learned to move (kind of) as a ghost, he doubted he’d make it on time. Lynne lived a little less than half an hour away from the junkyard by car, and Cabanela couldn’t exactly drive there in his current state. Plus he’d wasted time figuring out how to navigate the afterlife. Yomiel and the blue man were probably almost there already.   
  
     The inspector jumped into the Ghost World, but then paused when he looked up at the raindrops suspended in the night sky. Time flowed differently in the Ghost World, he remembered. Or rather, it didn’t flow at all. Cabanela felt a grin spread over his face at this. He’d be able to get to Lynne with this newfound trick, but there was still the issue of actually being able to _do_ anything. Oh well, he’d always been good at thinking on the swing.   
  
     With this in mind, and fire literally in his soul, Cabanela darted from the old umbrella on the ground up to the pay phone to better reach the fan sitting on top of a pile of garbage – when suddenly he _slipped_  again. Instead of the world going dark and grey like the night sky though, Cabanela found himself in a completely new environment. The world was still bleached white, but instead of the busted furniture and used appliances he expected, he was surrounded by what seemed to be living white strings, forming a tunnel with several forks branching off in the distance. They cracked with electricity and Cabanela could hear a metallic sort of buzzing in the air.   
  
      _The phone lines_ , he realized. He turned around to see what could only be described as a portal, outlined by layers of white strings. An image of the old junk yard shown through. He could use this to get around, then. It was certainly more convenient than hopping from object to object all the way across town. Reviewing a map of the city in his head, he grabbed the nearest line and let himself be pulled in the electrical current and zipped away from the junkyard. He still didn’t know how he died, or if he was even capable of doing anything besides spectating the events that were about to unfold. But as was often the case with the loose and lanky inspector, the impossibilities that were before him were irrelevant. Things were going down tonight, and it wasn’t like he was gonna let death stop him.


	2. 7:31 PM

Cabanela had only been to Lynne’s house a handful of times before. The first time was when she moved in, and the entire department helped her lug boxes of nicknacks and memories inside. It was her first time living on her own, and the boys had decided to surprise her with cake and free manual labor. At the time, Cabanela would have never thought he’d be visiting again under these circumstances.

Traveling through the phone line got him there in what felt like seconds. Electricity thrummed through him and pulled his spirit across town. Taking the necessary turns to get to his baby’s apartment, he let the line spit him out when he reached his distention. He was not pleased with what he saw when he got there. Yomiel and Jeego had already arrived, and the blue assassin’s shotgun was ready to fire. Cabanela felt his heart stop in his chest (wasn’t it already stopped?) and turned to see who the gun was pointed at.

Lynne was nowhere to be seen, thank the gods, but Kamila was standing on the other side of the room. She was facing the two strangers, hands clutched at her chest, and tears streaming down her face. Lynne’s dog, Missile, was doing a valiant job of protecting his mistress. Sensing her distress, he’d placed himself between Kamila and the strangers. His high, piercing bark, though not as intimidating as he probably thought it was, cut through the air like a siren. The wall behind Kamila suddenly shook as something banged on it three times from the opposite side. The poor girl jumped at the noise.

“Shut that mutt up!” came a shout.

The neighbor was home. Cabanela thanked whatever higher power for that, at least. It meant the assassin would be less likely to fire off that shotgun of his. With any luck, she’d even notice something was amiss next door. Kamila seemed to have the same idea. Unfortunately though, while she was a little genius, she was too young to fully learn the art of subtlety. Her face lit up, but before she could so much as open her mouth, Yomiel noticed. Corners of his mouth curling up, he made a show of moving his head back and forth and raised a finger to his lips.

“Shhhh,” he purred. Jeego cocked his gun to drive the point home. She paled again, and tears ran silently down her face. Cabanela felt his blood (again… what? He was dead.) course through his veins, white hot and enraged. He’d kill them for threatening Kamila! He had to do something. He slipped into the Ghost World and was about to jump across the small apartment to place himself between his goddaughter and the two thugs who dared to threaten her, when he saw something: a glowing blue flame.

It was resting in the core of Yomiel’s white silhouette, flickering and dancing, just like Cabanela’s own soul. The only difference was that there were blue arcs of energy coming from it, blooming like petals. Curious, Cabanela looked to the outlines of Jeego, Kamila, and Missile, but they lacked the flames. What was it about Yomiel and Cabanela that set them apart? Why was Yomiel’s fire different? That was for another time though. Right now he had to focus on the situation at hand and figure out how to protect Kamila.

He jumped from object to object, until he was possessing the star on top of a Christmas tree, between Kamila and the shotgun. He slipped back into the world of the living and heard the girl whimper. Missile, spurred on by hearing his mistress in such a state of distress, had finally had enough. He gave a low growl, and then launched himself forward, meager fangs bared at the intruders. He jumped up in the air to attack, but in the end, was unable to do anything. Jeego, startled and antsy, pulled the trigger of his shotgun. Silver pellets shot out, many of them burying themselves in the dog’s body causing blood to spray out in a fine red mist. With a yelp, Missile flew back from the recoil.

Things were devolving rapidly – Cabanela’s senses went into overdrive when the bang of the shotgun tore through the air. Forgetting he was dead, and thus unable to intervene, he jumped into the Ghost World. He reached out to the closest core and bolted from the Christmas star. The next thing he knew, Cabanela was throwing the poor dog by the collar, swinging him in an arc back towards the assailants. He let go of the core in Missile’s collar, and the dog lived up to his namesake: in the next moment, Yomiel was on the receiving end of a face full of pomeranian.

Huh. Guess I gooooooot a few tricks up my sleeve. Sorry, pooch.

Yomiel, unprepared for a dog flying at him, was knocked down when Missile collided with his face. Though he lamented the poor pomeranian’s fate, Cabanela couldn’t deny the flash of satisfaction shooting through him. The feeling was short-lived. The inspector heard something that was halfway between a gasp and a sob from behind him and he froze.

No. No nononononononono.

He turned to see Jowd’s little girl, eyes wide and tears streaking down her face. She held herself still as death. Her skin was pale as her blood drained from her body, blooming into a crimson flower on her dress. For a long moment, it was as though the night itself was holding its breath. And then Kamila fell to the floor. Cabanela could only stare at her crumpled form. His heart stopped in his throat as memories whipped through his mind, one after the other. Jowd and Alma holding a tiny swaddled Kamila for the first time, asking Cabanela to be the godfather. All the clever little inventions she presented to him whenever he visited. Her face when Jowd had been sentenced. All of these moments in her life, painfully real to him, flashed in his mind. Maybe if he saw her life, so vibrant and bright, he could preserve some part of that in her fading body.

Baby, you can’t join me yet.

“Whoops.” The voice cut through Cabanela. He spun, his grief replaced by a consuming rage. He was ready to empty hell on these bastards. He thought of Alma, of Jowd, and now they’d even taken Kamila, and all they had to say was, ‘Whoops.’

Snapping back to the ghost world, the inspector curled his fingers around the first projectile he could find – the TV remote sitting on the sofa – and willed himself to remember what it’d felt like to fling the dog at Yomiel. It’d been as easy as dancing, just curl, swing, and –

His body jolted, the momentum he’d been gathering suddenly halted. Wide-eyed and enraged, he snapped his eyes back to see what would dare hold him back from these monsters. His fingers were still curled around the soft blue core of the star. He yanked again, but it stayed frustratingly still. Letting out something close to a growl, he jumped down to the next closest core and tried vainly to manipulate that one, too. Still nothing. By the time Cabanela grabbed the donut, he was starting to get desperate. He couldn’t move anything again.

He switched back to the land of the living. Cabanela glowered at Yomiel, his rage fueling the flame that was his soul until all he could see was a flickering haze of red. Or was it blue? Jeego glanced at his companion before turning to leave. Yomiel looked around the room for a long moment, his face blank. Then his lips began to curl at the edges, his expression morphing into one of vindictive glee. He turned and walked out the door, not even bothering to close it.

Desperate to follow after them, but unable to leave Kamila, Cabanela stayed rooted in place. He stared at the door long after Yomiel had left his field of view. But then a whimper tore at him like a knife and he was by her side in an instant.

“Shhh, baby,” he whispered. The voice didn’t sound like his own. There was no lilt to it, no smoothness and swagger. It was too soft, too broken as his trembling hands fluttered around her. For the first time since he’d died, Cabanela found himself wishing for his body. He ghosted his hands over Kamila’s cheeks, unable to wipe at the tears there. Another weak sound escaped her, her eyes clamped shut. She was curled on her side, around her wound. She didn’t stay conscious for long, and Cabanela was thankful for at least that one mercy.

He could only watch as Kamila’s life leaked out onto the floor, staining the carpet red. In three minutes she was gone. He didn’t know how long he stayed over her body, unable to weep.

“Miss Kamila?” A voice, high and frail, shocked Cabanela out of his grief. His head shot up and he turned to see a transparent pomeranian standing in his own dead body.

“Missile.” He’d completely forgotten about the other victim. Missile snapped to attention, looking up at Cabanela.

“Uncle Nellie!” Hearing Kamila’s name for him brought a sad smile to his face.

“Hey, pooch,” he answered. Apparently dead dogs could speak. Not the most surprising development of the night. He had magical Pomeranian-flinging abilities. He wasn’t really in a position to judge. “…You did good.” Missile hadn’t saved Kamila… but he’d died for her.

That was more than Cabanela had done.

Together they looked down at Kamila. Cabana jumped to the Ghost World to move closer to her, but froze when he saw a pale orange core resting at the center of her body. Her soul. Or at least, that was his best guess. It wasn’t like his own, or Yomiel’s. There was no flickering blue flame, no blooming petals. Just a still, orange ball, similar to the white-blue cores of inanimate objects. Scrunching his eyebrows together, he looked over his shoulder to see Missile. The pomeranian, eyes darting around to take in this new white world, had a blue flame flickering at his core.

Why were they different?

Missile perked up. “I wouldn’t know something like that, I’m just a Pomeranian!” Cabanela raised his eyebrows. This… was a new development.

Missile, sit. The pooch didn’t react, but then Cabanela remembered he never followed commands, anyway.

“Sure I do!” Missile chirped. Well, that answered his question about Missile hearing his thoughts, at least. “Whenever Miss Kamila wants to play I always follow!”

“She has a coooooooommand for that?”

“Yup! She says ‘no’ really loud!” Missile’s tail wagged frantically behind him. Cabanela wasn’t even surprised.

A smile tried to curl his lips, but he couldn’t manage more than a grimace. He looked back down.

Cabanela reached out to touch Kamila’s core, the only part of her that was still available to him. But as his fingers brushed against the orange ball, it changed. A warm blue flame blossomed from where he touched the core. The fire enveloped it, dancing softly around it like a shield.

“……Mmnm…Missile no…” A frail voice echoed from it, whisper soft and sleepy.

“Miss Kamila!” Missile barked in response, darting over to the core. He barreled past Cabanela and pounced. But the moment his paws touched her core, the world slipped and disappeared in a blinding flash.

The world came back into focus and Cabanela blinked his eyes. But it seemed far away and detached from him, as though he were a spectator watching a screen. It was an achingly familiar scene: Yomiel and Jeego leering at a terrified Kamila. Cabana wanted to knock the gaudy shotgun out of Jeego’s blue hands and aim it somewhere more satisfying. Like his head.

Yomiel raised a finger to his lips and Cabanela could only watch as fresh tears streamed down Kamila’s cheeks. Then Missile sprang into action, only to be shot. The inspector stared intently at how his body changed direction mid-flight, swinging in an arc to collide with Yomiel as the life left him.

“I don’t think I remember that part.” Cabanela spared Missile a glance before turning back to the scene.

“Whoops. It was for a good caaaaaause, I assure you.” Yomiel went toppling to the ground.

And after a moment, so did Kamila.

Yomiel and Jeego left the apartment. But the scene didn’t end. For three more minutes, Cabanela and Missile watched as Kamila’s blood stained the floor. She stopped whimpering. Eventually she stopped breathing.

The scene ended and the world flashed again. When Cabanela opened his eyes, he and Missile were back at the beginning: Yomiel and Jeego. The shotgun. Kamila. Only this time they were looking up from the floor, slightly behind Kamila. Where she’d died.

“We walked backwards!” Missile shouted. “Through time! Again!” He seemed very excited. Cabanela was mostly confused. The last time had been like watching a scene from a movie – they’d been removed from it entirely. But this time… they were part of it again.

The thought snapped the inspector back to attention. He didn’t understand what was going on – how it was possible that Missile had somehow thrown them back in time by touching Kamila’s core, why it was necessary for him to rewatch Kamila’s murder, and then relive it. But then he realized something.

Doesn’t much matter if it’s impossible. Or painful. This is a chance.

He flipped to his pristine white Ghost World and jumped from the memory of Kamila’s core to the tree star. He could move. He could manipulate. Kamila wouldn’t die again. Missile stayed at his mistress’ side, growling at her would-be murderers, ready to defend her to the death again as a ghost.

Cabanela switched back and the world became saturated in color again. He watched as Yomiel raised a pale, very snappable finger to his thin lips and shushed Kamila for a third time. The inspector’s eyes darted around the apartment, desperate mind straining to put pieces of a plan together.

But the world was moving to fast, he didn’t have time, Missile was jumping Jeego pulled the trigger and–

The world turned white as the gun went off, silver pellets scattering from the barrel. Missile was frozen mid-air, already reeling back from the shot with a spray of blood fanning out from his wounds. Cabanela’s chest was heaving and he could feel sweat beading on his forehead from imagined adrenaline. He took in the scene, a moment captured a split second before he lost her again. He turned to look at her, to take in her young face (so young she was too young to lose her mother, her father, her life), eyes squeezed shut, arms held up in a desperate shield. Missile, transparent and furious, had placed himself in front of Kamila, for all the good it would do now.

Cabanela could feel a clumsy, demanding emotion try to claw its way up his throat.

He turned back to see Jeego and his damned shotgun and took in the spray of pellets. He fought to shove back his grief. She wasn’t dead yet.

Missile’s body had absorbed most of the pellets aimed at Kamila, the rest going wide. Cabanela could see one though, shining with a tiny orange core – it looked like it’d slipped by, just below Missile’s front left paw. That was the one. That was the damned thing that would steal Kamila from them.

Cabanela reached forward with a long, brown hand, praying to whatever god there was that this would work. His fingers curled around the core, feeling its solidness. Then with a flick of the wrist, he nudged it up.

As easy as dancing.

The world snapped back to life and the pellet’s trajectory arced up ever so slightly to fly above Kamila’s head. It flew harmlessly through the thin wall separating the neighboring apartment.

The crushing weight of relief pressed down on Cabanela and he let out a shaky breath that was almost a sob.

There was the sound of something shattering next door and then a shrill scream. But Cabanela’s attention was on Yomiel, the way his eyebrows flew up in surprise. A thrill of smug triumph shot through Cabanela at that.

But then Yomiel’s eyebrows lowered again slowly into a glare. Cababela could see the muscles tensing in his jaws. Anger radiated off him in waves, like the arcs of power blooming from his strange core.

Cabanela turned back to look at Kamila, making sure she was alright.

Suddenly there was an eye pressed up to the hole in the wall behind her. It looked from the strange man with banana-yellow hair, to the stranger blue-skinned man, to scared little Kamila. The eye focused on her for a long moment before snapping to the golden shotgun pointed at her. Then the eye pulled away from the wall. Jeego and Yomiel glanced at each other.

The only warning the men got were three short, muffled words.

“I think not."

The wall opened up with a crack and plaster went flying. In its place was a woman’s enraged face, her hair in full bloom and fire in her eyes.

Cabanela didn’t know much about Lynne’s neighbor. She was the justice minister’s wife and had impeccable fashion sense, but other than that he’d always thought of her as unimportant. Seeing her now though, perhaps a reevaluation was in order.

With a mighty roar, she raised her manicured hands and tore away at more chunks of the wall, until the hole was big enough for her to fire a typewriter at Yomiel like a cannonball. Kamila scurried away, falling backwards on her rear as she watched in awe.

It was beyond gratifying to see the fabled Manipulator felled by a typewriter. His lanky limbs went flopping as he crashed to the floor.

“What the–“ Jeego was cut off when a wine bottle went flying at him, smacking him square in the nose. Emma kicked at the wall with her stilettos, widening the hole until it was large enough for her to clamber through.

She came in like a wrecking ball, bringing destruction in her wake. Cabanela could only watch in awe (Missile was cowering behind his leg – he’d always been terrified of their grouchy neighbor, and had forgotten that she couldn’t actually do anything to him anymore) as she steamrolled her way through Lynne’s tiny apartment.

“What are you doing? Shoot her!” Yomiel struggled to push himself up, wiping the blood from his nose. He shoved the typewriter off of himself. It seemed a though he were aiming for Emma, but was too disoriented to aim properly. It landed with a rattling thud by her feet.

“Yeah wait, I gotta aim!” Jeego replied, fear creeping into his voice as he saw Emma barreling towards him.

“I think you’re missing the point of a shotgun!”

But before the assassin could even think of a retort, she was on him. Picking up her hefty typewriter again, Emma slammed it into the side of his head, and he cursed, stumbling backwards.

“Kamila, open the window!” she ordered. The girl, who was just as captivated by her neighbor as everyone else present, was stunned into action at Emma’s command. She rushed to the window and struggled to undo the latch with shaking fingers.

“Ow!” Jeego yelped. “You don’t wanna – I don’t know – help?” he shouted at Yomiel as he tried (failed) to ward off Emma’s barrage.

But Emma was one step ahead of him. Eyes never leaving Jeego, she produced a glass filled with deep red wine (from where?? From the depths of her burning, literary soul, Cabanela supposed.) and flung it at Yomiel, who had only just managed to stand, leaving him a spluttering mess. Without missing a beat, she backhanded Jeego and he fell – right out the open window.

Kamila, wide-eyed, looked out the window to see Jeego on the ground. Whatever she saw brought a gasp to her lips and she clamped a hand over her mouth. But Emma had other things to worry about. Yomiel was getting up. Bending down, she grabbed the bottom edge of the sofa and with a mighty roar, tipped it. It toppled over onto Yomiel, flattening him.

“Amelie!” Emma shouted. “Out the door, now, my little angel!” Then she grabbed Kamila’s arm and yanked her away from the window. Climbing through the ragged hole she’d blown in the wall, she collected her confused daughter and pulled the two girls out the door, down the stairs, and onto the street.

Cabanela stared after her, not quite believing what he’d just seen. She’d descended upon the little apartment like a veritable force of nature, and just as quickly she was gone.

With a wife like that, he could almost forgive the justice minister for being a simpering mess half the time.

A roar exploded from behind him and Yomiel shoved the sofa away. Or at least, he tried to. It jolted upwards half a foot before falling down again on him. There was a furious curse and then the sofa went flying across the room. Cabanela jumped back, ghostly muscles tensed and ready for a fight.

Yomiel pushed himself up on his hands before stepping up on one leg, then the other.

Cabanela looked down to see something he hadn’t noticed before: a jagged bullet hole outlined by a dark crimson stain in the knee of Yomiel’s pants. He hadn’t been shot at in this scene. Had Cabanela done that at the junkyard? He couldn’t remember but preemptively patted himself on the back.

Kneecap. Good shot.

“What’s a kneecap?” Cabanela ignored Missile’s question. Yomiel was finally back on his feet, his stupid hair a mess and glasses askew, but sadly no bones broken.

“I know you’re there, Inspector.” Yomiel spat the title out like it was curdled milk, bitter and foul on his tongue and Cabanela tensed. Shit. How? Did it have to do with his core? “Just because you have a few tricks up your sleeves, you think you can stop what’s coming.” Yomiel’s lips curled up into an ugly smile. He wiped at the smear of blood under his nose again (a surprisingly small amount of blood – it hadn’t been long enough for the flow to stop. His theory about Yomiel having healing abilities solidified.) and looked back up. Cabana felt his gaze resting suspiciously close to where he stood. “You can’t.” Then he turned and strolled out the door, not bothering to close it.

The world flashed white and something cranked and clicked back into place.

Kamila's fate was averted.

Cabanela and Missile found themselves once again in Lynne’s deserted apartment, sofa upside-down across the room and a gaping hole in the wall. The door was still open. They were back in the present.

“We… we fixed her, right?” Missile’s bark drew Cabanela’s attention and he looked down at the dog. His tail was for once not going 60 miles per hour and he looked up at Cabanela with ears perked at attention, eager for the answer.

“Seems weeeeeee did,” he replied after a long moment. He wasn’t entirely sure how but they’d done it. Kamila was alive, saved from her fate by a dead man and her dog.

They’d manipulated events after they’d already been written. They could do it again.

Something was going down tonight. Cabanela wasn’t sure what yet – wasn’t even sure how he’d died, though he had a few guesses. But death gave him more mobility than life ever had. And he was planning on squeezing every opportunity he could out of this new-found freedom.

Plans began to swirl into being in his head. The corners of his mouth edged up into a smile that could only mean trouble.

“Alright little waaaaaaaarrior, let’s go.” Cabana led the way to the phone, jumping from core to core.

It was time to head back to the junkyard.


End file.
